Metsa Group has targeted triggering “systemic” international change in land management with the launch of a pilot to boost biodiversity across 650 hectares, Carbon Pulse has learned.
The Finnish forestry company has a vision to inspire people around the world to better support biodiversity around urban areas, Timo Lehesvirta, leading nature expert at the firm, said.
“We want [the pilot] to be an internationally recognised frontrunner … to mainstream biodiversity-focused planning in urban and industrial areas,” he told Carbon Pulse.
“This kind of urban biodiversity planning should be harmonised internationally. Our pilot is part of this.”
“We want to develop international-level criteria for how to implement biodiversity-related planning in industrial and urban areas,” Lehesvirta said. “We are looking for suitable research and a university partner to [begin to] participate in this project by Christmas.”
“We want to invite stakeholders to build those criteria.”
The company intends to conduct stakeholder engagement to further its ambitions.
FOREST STEWARDS
Members of Metsa’s parent company Metsaliitto Cooperative own around half of private forests in Finland. The former had wood-related sales of around €2 billion in 2022.
Metsa has launched a pilot to increase biodiversity in commercial and recreational forests around two of its mills near Kemi, a town in Lapland, as the first step towards achieving its goals.
The company aims to improve biodiversity over 650 hectares through measures including regenerative forestry, adding meadows, increasing the amount of dead wood, and bird breeding, Lehesvirta said.
Metsa will use local types of vegetation to establish habitats suitable for endangered species, while testing other approaches to increasing biodiversity in partnership with conservation organisation Villi Vyohyke, the forest company said in a press release.
Monitoring of the areas could consider information such as species inventories, quantity of dead wood and soil quality, but the company has not finalised any metrics yet, Lehesvirta said.
BEYOND FINLAND
Metsa aims to roll out similar biodiversity support to locations around 20 more mills in the UK, Sweden, Estonia, Slovakia, Poland, and Germany, at sites of between 20 and 100 hectares, over the next few years, Lehesvirta said.
The company plans to try to capitalise on the Kemi initiative in time, potentially through biodiversity credits, but the only benefit for now is reputational, he said. “We have to be very careful with initiatives targeting net positive impact that it really happens in practice,” he said.
Jere Nieminen, chair of Villi Vyohyke, said: “Metsa Group is a big operator, which gives our actions greater leverage for a wider cultural change towards the international mainstream of biodiversity protection.”
Meanwhile, Matti Ruotsalainen, mayor of Kemi, added that “Metsa Group’s initiative is important for Kemi. Together, we can develop and strengthen the pioneering role that the Sea Lapland region plays in protecting nature. The coexistence of industry and nature benefits all of us”.
By Thomas Cox – t.cox@carbon-pulse.com
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